MTB
Winning Blind: Kurt Sorge
Kurt Sorge recalls the second-highest score ever recorded at Red Bull Rampage, on a run with two drops he’d never hit before that run.
This story is one of the 3-part series, Leaps of Faith, from the November/December double issue featuring 2022 Red Bull Rampage riders.
2015 was probably my wildest run at Rampage. I was coming off an injury the year prior. It was a second-year venue, so it was my first time there. There wasn’t much line choice because most of the other riders had already chosen them [the year before].
There’s a pretty good recipe for a Rampage run: You need to have a little bit of everything. Sometimes you want to start with something that’s steep and raw, but a lot of the time that line will funnel you into the valleys and make it difficult to get back on the ridge where you can keep consistent speed. It’s tough because you’re jumping your way down and the whole mountain is quite steep. So it takes a lot of braking technique.
There were two big drops that I hadn’t even been able to ride in practice. Digging always cuts into practice, and that year our digging went all the way to the end. And those features are so big that the risk is high. I just wanted to hit them on my run and let that be that.
Where we built that first drop, it was hard to get to, so I didn’t actually go up there until the day of the event, because I knew I couldn’t practice it. I knew it was going to be a rough landing.
Nerves are high at the top. When you’re up there, your heart’s racing, and you’re doing breathwork. You do a couple of squats or circles with your arms to stay warm and limber. But then it’s just visualizing every maneuver and every section of the course. It’s a long run, and it’s all very blind. You go off the top and just roll over into the abyss.
Typically, it’s pretty tough to lay down your perfect run. You never know how you’re going to land. And I think that’s what’s so cool about mountain biking: Whether you’re riding a jump line or a trail, you’re making it up as you go.
From the landing after the first drop, I wanted to get across and back onto the ridge. But it’s super blind, and where we had to put the lip wasn’t necessarily in the best spot. I knew I needed to go left, and in practice I made sure I did. But on my actual run I came close to missing the landing. Luckily I landed it and had a moment to recover.
The bridge gave me some rhythm. Then came that next big drop—the other one that I had yet to hit because I ran out of practice time—and it was wild to hit that because it was one of the biggest drops on the course. I went in a little fast and landed at the bottom, and thank goodness my bike was set up good, and I rode out of it no problem. And then it was a couple of last jumps, and I was stoked to make it down with a clean run. Until they read the score, I had no idea where I was going to be in the standings. I was just happy coming off two years of injuries and being able to put a run down that mountain.
More Red Bull Rampage stories!
